Still Here
Sep. 23rd, 2005 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaThere are still birds singing outside.
The wind is picking up, short gusts coming out of the northeast - but no rain yet, and there's still significant sunlight peeking through the clouds.
CNN.com says she's down to a (very strong) Category 3. All bless the Desert, sending hot, dry air to force her to spend energy rebuilding her eyewall instead of picking up more steam from the warm moistness of the Gulf. Io, Set!
Projected landfall is pretty much over Port Arthur sometime Saturday morning.
Our windows are taped up in the front room. The Spouse is going to work on the back room next. I'm going to be securing any objects that haven't already been put up and sticking them in the Harry closet or the carport (depending on how big they are - including the bag of trash that some moron left ON THE LAWN this morning.
--
I'm tired of talking about the hurricane. I'm going to talk about something else now.
What does it mean to be virtuous? I have been faced several times recently with the realization that something that I consider a virtue is seen by others as a vice; and once with the reverse realization - something I see as clearly a harmful thing is seen by, at the very least, a majority of my colleagues and most of my administration team, as a positive virtue.
Is there something more to "virtue" than "that which promotes weal"? If a society thinks something is a vice, is that enough to make it one? It seems obvious to me that some things (including all four of the house "virtues" from the HP books) are virtues or vices only in context, but it seems that this is a minority view as well - if bravery is a virtue, then it is virtuous even if it is bravery for a destructive purpose (such as, say, steering a truckful of explosives into a pizzeria). This leads to people doing weird things like calling suicide bombers "cowards," which I have an incredibly hard time wrapping my head around.
The wind is picking up, short gusts coming out of the northeast - but no rain yet, and there's still significant sunlight peeking through the clouds.
CNN.com says she's down to a (very strong) Category 3. All bless the Desert, sending hot, dry air to force her to spend energy rebuilding her eyewall instead of picking up more steam from the warm moistness of the Gulf. Io, Set!
Projected landfall is pretty much over Port Arthur sometime Saturday morning.
Our windows are taped up in the front room. The Spouse is going to work on the back room next. I'm going to be securing any objects that haven't already been put up and sticking them in the Harry closet or the carport (depending on how big they are - including the bag of trash that some moron left ON THE LAWN this morning.
--
I'm tired of talking about the hurricane. I'm going to talk about something else now.
What does it mean to be virtuous? I have been faced several times recently with the realization that something that I consider a virtue is seen by others as a vice; and once with the reverse realization - something I see as clearly a harmful thing is seen by, at the very least, a majority of my colleagues and most of my administration team, as a positive virtue.
Is there something more to "virtue" than "that which promotes weal"? If a society thinks something is a vice, is that enough to make it one? It seems obvious to me that some things (including all four of the house "virtues" from the HP books) are virtues or vices only in context, but it seems that this is a minority view as well - if bravery is a virtue, then it is virtuous even if it is bravery for a destructive purpose (such as, say, steering a truckful of explosives into a pizzeria). This leads to people doing weird things like calling suicide bombers "cowards," which I have an incredibly hard time wrapping my head around.
